Secret Defense Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Secret Defense Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 5, 2023

Cohen Media Group continues to curate the sometimes baffling filmography of Jacques Rivette, a New Wave auteur (an appropriate descriptor, given his long association with Cahiers du Cinéma) who, as commentator Richard Peña mentions in his analysis of the film, never quite seemed to connect with audiences in the same way some of his contemporaries did. Rivette's films are often opaque and overtly theatrical (some of his films either take place in or feature theaters in some form or fashion), and as such they often offer obstacles to easy, traditionally "cinematic", accessibility. Secret Defense may be an exception to that general rule, in that, while often slow and almost deliberately lugubrious, there actually is a narrative with some momentum in the film, something that is arguably not always the case with Rivette's oeuvre. Peña makes a rather interesting comparison with regard to Rivette in terms of how two different meanings of the word "plot" (i.e., "story" vs. "conspiracy") are often at odds with each other in Rivette's films, and that's perhaps the case with this kinda sorta thriller, which posits Sandrine Bonnaire as a scientist named Sylvie who is suddenly more or less thrust into some long simmering family drama when her younger brother Paul (Grégoire Colin) shows up unannounced at Sylvie's lab one night to inform her he's "discovered" the fact that their father did not die in an accident, but was in fact murdered. That ostensible revelation then sets off a domino effect of sorts, though it's a domino effect in slow motion, as evidenced by this film's three hour running time.

There are any number of detours the film takes as it wends its way to a blatantly theatrical conclusion that involves a "frozen tableau" of sorts that would be perfectly at home on a proscenium stage as the curtains are drawn. Among these is a puzzling disappearance of Paul, which is later resolved in an almost throwaway manner, as well as an increasingly convoluted relationship between Sylvie and Walser (Jerzy Radziwilowicz), her father's former partner whom Paul suspects of being the killer. There's also a father curious conceit that Peña spends some time discussing in his commentary wherein Laure Marsac plays two roles, albeit sisters.

Kind of interestingly just as I was about to start writing this review, a bunch of PR crossed my news feed about another kinda sorta French thriller, The Night of the 12th, with some reports discussing how this ostensible "whodunit" may never provide clear, unambiguous answers about a murder, which is supposedly "problematic" for some people. Some may respond to that critique by saying, "Ever heard of a little film called Rashomon ?", but joking aside, Secret Defense, while certainly not as deliberately obfuscatory as some of Rivette's other work, isn't in any big hurry to provide "answers" to its "mystery", which is less of a "whodunit" courtesy of Paul's identification of Walser as the culprit and more of a " did he do it?", since evidence is, a la The Night of the 12th, somewhat ambiguous.

Things approach a more traditional thriller status in a long vignette (pretty much every vignette in this film is long) where Sylvie decides Walser is guilty and that Paul is constitutionally incapable of taking Walser out, and so Sylvie decides to intervene. That leads to the fulcrum on which the "plot" (again, in both senses of the term) hinges, as things don't go exactly as planned. That result, which won't be spoiled here, leaves Sylvie in a near catatonic state, which perhaps only adds to this film's pacing issues. In fact, it can be kind of interesting to think of what someone like Claude Chabrol or dare I say Alfred Hitchcock might have done with this same material, which ultimately weaves in Sylvie and Paul's mother Geneviève (Françoise Fabian), who may have a secret or two of her own, one of which involves the death of Sylvie and Paul's older sister, something that's alluded to briefly early in the film but which recurs later with more import.

That very facet of some kind of allusive element suddenly taking center stage is actually discussed in Richard Peña's commentary, specifically with regard to a relatively early scene where Sylvie and Paul are at a sidewalk cafe and a seeming extra in the background turns out not to be. It's interesting from a stylistic standpoint to pay attention to how Rivette and cinematographer William Lubtchansky deal with scenes like this, in this particular case with a very slow tracking back and forth between Sylvie and Paul which reveals that aforementioned third character deep within the frame.

Secret Defense Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Secret Defense is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Media Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. As with previous Jacques Rivette films released by the label, this one has been sub-branded with both the Cohen Film Collection and Classics of French Cinema imprints. The re-release trailer included on this disc as a supplement touts a 4K restoration, as does the front cover, which remain the sole technical data points I've been able to track down. This is a really ravishing looking transfer from both detail and perhaps especially palette perspectives. Grain is also tightly resolved throughout the presentation. In digging around the always questionable internet to find more information on the transfer, I did stumble across some online commentary mentioning that this version may not have some fades that the theatrical exhibition did. I frankly never saw this in theaters, and so can't comment authoritatively, but am mentioning my findings here for the record.

Secret Defense Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Secret Defense features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track in the original French. There's not really an elaborate sound design in the film, but the long train sequence(s) offer some good ambient environmental sounds, and several outdoor scenes also offer some lifelike background sounds. Long swaths of this film play out without any dialogue. The music features a couple of performances from the always superb Jordi Savall, whom some cinephiles may remember from Tous les Matins du Monde. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. This follows in Cohen's perhaps questionable tradition of offering foreign language films with forced English subtitles.

Secret Defense Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Richard Peña, Director Emeritus, New York Film Festival and Professor of Film and Media Studies, Columbia University somewhat hilariously may have escaped an audio editor's finessing, as it seems to include Peña offering timecodes and the like for later (and, it turns out, nonexistent) tweaking.


• Re-release Trailer (HD; 1:00)

Secret Defense Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In terms of that aforementioned thought experiment about someone like Chabrol or Hitchcock crafting a film out of this same basic storyline, I think the first salient thing that either of those masters would have done is edit it. This has a lot of really interesting content, but Rivette seems to want to offer the cinematic equivalent of navel gazing for at times extended periods, which can make getting to any perceived denouements something of a slog. The film benefits from some really nicely nuanced performances, especially by Bonnaire. Technical merits are solid, with the possible exception noted in my video comments above, and the commentary is quite interesting (albeit with some "meta" data that probably should have been excised), for anyone who may be considering making a purchase.